Sir J.C. Bose has been resurrected in many fields recently, more than five decades after his death. In the late 1990s, Bose was acknowledged as one of the inventors of the radio, alongside Marconi. We now know Bose held the first patent for a semiconductor device and he was the first to have used millimetre waves for radio communication, presently used in 5G technology. In plant neurobiology, scientists realized that Bose had claimed plants can feel pain, like animals and humans do, in the early 20th century.

Bose lived during a turbulent phase in India’s history. Closely connected to Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore and two extraordinary European women, Bose’s life is a labyrinth of remarkable relationships unexplainable in conventional terms. Both favoured and disfavoured by the English, loved and hated by his acquaintances, mythified and forgotten by his countrymen, Bose was a contronym. This book is an attempt at demystifying the ‘Boseian’ myth.